Finding hope when facing challenges

All too common in conversation it has been spoken that 2020 was the hardest year our nation and state have experienced due to the COVID-19 pandemic and related issues. Finding hope has been a great challenge for most.

In Hot Springs County, our residents have been hit very hard. There have been job losses, business failures, divorces, suicides and other very challenging situations.

However, the community of Thermopolis has been working hard to bring support to its residents. First responders, front-line health workers, businesses and churches are all contributing aid.

Hot Springs County is the least populated county in the least populated state in our nation and many residents are going through food shortages. Local churches in the Thermopolis community have been providing food drives to individuals and families in need. 

Churches such as the River of Life Fellowship, Risen Son’s Messiah’s Mall, Community Church and the Episcopal Church and others have worked tirelessly to feed the community. River of Life gave out around 200 boxes of food in December and 197 in November. This amount is equal to one-sixth of the county’s population. One-third of those were children.

Suicide in Hot Springs County is also a highly relevant topic.

Suicide is the seventh leading cause of death in Wyoming, but it’s the second leading cause of death for people ages 10-44. On average, one person died by suicide every 60 hours in the state. More than four times as many people died by suicide in Wyoming in 2018 that in alcohol-related motor vehicle accidents. The total deaths to suicide reflected a total of 3,058 years of potential life lost before age 65. Wyoming ranks third nationwide in suicide death rates.

Now, with the new year upon us, many are looking for hope and wonder where to find it. Some residents of Wyoming can seek out spiritual or secular help. There is indeed a great need.

Cristy Meier, lay pastoral associate of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, provides counseling services. She tackles the issue of hope by identifying with many people in need and seeks to point them in a positive direction.

Meier said, “There are just so many people. Everyone is just hurting. However, the breakthrough we are going to be seeing is it will not stay dark and dreary forever. 2021 is going to bring a lot of hope in. How do I have that confidence? Through my faith. What I see in the next year for the hope and faith of our community is we will grow as a community and we won’t isolate ourselves after we are allowed to get together again. As time goes by and we get further and further away from this pandemic, I think we are going to spend an entire year recouping. People will see so much in that year as they are coming together. People are helping each other more.”

Meier added, “So many people in our community have been directly affected by the pandemic. People and their families, perhaps for the first time ever, are relying on the kindness of strangers and charity programs to get through their daily lives. Folks that have never given a second thought to the golden rule “Love your neighbor” are suddenly discovering what “loving your neighbor” is all about. 

Meier even gained a new perspective of hope personally through the experiences of her own trials.

In December 2019, Meier suffered a severe case of the mumps that caused major swelling in her brain and other areas. She suffered a traumatic brain injury that affected her cognitive abilities and memory. After the mumps went away, she still faced incredible challenges.

During the year 2020, she started the road of recovery doing speech and physical therapy. Sometime later Meier was asked to preach at a local service and she was struggling to put her words together. In the back of the church was an elderly man, a Vietnam vet, who was moved with compassion toward Meier. Afterward, he spoke with her and they connected on a level Meier said hadn’t before.

Meier learned from her tragedy in her health to have hope because her disability allowed her to reach others that were not reachable before. She faced a monumental challenge and has not given up and is reaching out to help others through her ministry and counseling services. 

Pastor Joe Moon of the River of Life Fellowship finds empathy with those who are struggling. When he meets families or individuals in need, he knows, “Just the realization that to be human means we are going to go through difficult things that would try to rob us from having hope in any given situation. Empathizing through people, even if you might not totally have gone through the same situation. Just knowing that being human, we all go through times of struggle. I understand you’re going through a difficult situation even though I have not gone through that particular one myself. But I have been through hard times too. Being able to listen to their story and then provide some encouragement. To leave them with hope. I think that is the greatest thing to do now is to speak hope into their situation.”

Moon provided a story of hope as he knew a couple from Colorado who were heavily involved in drugs. He said, “They were not just doing drugs but had a history of selling drugs. God got a hold of them and changed their whole life around. Even the family’s kids were into actually peddling the drugs. God got a hold of their whole family. The parents were in their 30s and their kids at the time were eight through eleven years old. When the police caught the father he was on meth and he had a knife and was threatening to kill his family. The cops came over and he got arrested. He should have done some prison time, but God spared him from all of that. They ended up coming to Christ and now they ended up with a brand new house and now all their family is doing really, really well.” 

Moon said his approach in dealing with hopelessness is, “The only way I can inspire hope in others is to lead them to the God of all hope. Most of my counseling I do is take them through scriptures and then we start talking about live events and things like that. And then discuss where they put their hopes into before and see if they can give God a try.”

Both Pastors Moon and Meier offered some practical advice when it comes to cultivating hope.

Meier said, “Try to stay positive. If you belong to groups, meet with them because when we isolate ourselves we begin to lose hope. Isolation is the enemy of hope.”

Moon added, “Make sure you are hanging around people who are hope filled. Having a positive community.”

Meier spoke about setting a vision for the new year. She said, “People say to write it down. Work up a goal sheet. I would advise that as I am someone with a slippery memory. If you belong to a church, if you go meet with them and commune with them as much as physically possible, that keeps that hope inside of us, where we can connect.” 

In regard to the new year, Moon said, “To enter into the new year with optimism and leave 2020 in hindsight because this is the new year and it will present itself in a new way. It’s not going to be a movie that says “to be continued.” It will be a fresh year. And I know that there are circumstances right now that of course hold or carry into it, but if we just keep our eyes on the bigger picture, we can actually create things that will generate hope.”

The Independent Record reached out to a local counseling center for their professional perspective on these matters, and unfortunately they were unavailable for comment.